Hans von Wangenheim

This article deals with the diplomat Hans von Wangenheim. For the administrative officer and judge see Hans Heinz von Wangenheim .

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Baron Hans von Wangenheim

Baron Ernst Friedrich Ulrich Hans von Wangenheim (born July 4, 1859 in Georgenthal near Gotha ; † October 25, 1915 in Constantinople ) was a German diplomat from the von Wangenheim family . During the First World War he was the German ambassador to Constantinople and reported on the genocide of the Armenians .

origin

His parents were the Saxon-Coburg-Gotha forester Alexander von Wangenheim (* 23 September 1829 - 29 May 1908) and his wife Sophie Frederike Helene von Zech (* 19 December 1838; † 1 August 1898).

Career in the diplomatic service

Hans von Wangenheim was the German envoy in Buenos Aires from 1901 to 1904 , and then worked in the same function in Mexico City . 1908/09 he was Prime Minister in Tangier . In 1909 he became ambassador to Athens , and from 1912 until his death in 1915, he became German ambassador to Constantinople. He was followed by Paul Graf Wolff Metternich zur Gracht in this position.

Genocide against the Armenians

When more and more details about the genocide of the Armenians became known to the German diplomats from around May 1915 , Wangenheim initially hesitated to discuss the deportations and massacres of the Armenian minority in the Ottoman Empire . On July 7, 1915, he reported to Berlin that the Armenians had also been deported from provinces that were not threatened by invasion:

"This measure and the way in which the resettlement is carried out shows that the government is actually pursuing the purpose of destroying the Armenian race in the Turkish Empire."

Until his death he intervened both with the Ottoman government and with his superiors in Berlin.

In 1915 he reported to his American colleague Henry Morgenthau senior of large-scale plans to relocate the Armenians to the USA and Russian Poland and to settle the Jews who had previously lived there in Asia Minor. But for that they would have to forego Zionist efforts. In Germany they don't want any Jews near the front. These ideas corresponded to the anti-Semitic war aims memorandum of the Pan-German Heinrich Claß from 1914. In April 1915 Wangenheim campaigned for Talaat Pascha and Enver Pascha to withdraw the announcement that all Zionists in Palestine would be fought. Later that year, together with Ambassador Morgenthau, he was able to prevent the deportation planned by Cemal Pascha of Jews who had immigrated to Palestine since the first Aliyah without acquiring Ottoman citizenship. Unlike the Armenians, he will help the Zionists, he explained to Morgenthau.

family

Von Wangenheim married Lucie Ahrendfeldt on April 29, 1886 in Dresden (born April 26, 1861 in Paris). The couple divorced in 1897. The couple had a son and a daughter:

• Hans-Heinz (born June 30, 1889; † August 7, 1981), lawyer ∞ November 7, 1916 Elisabeth Klara Marie von Richter (born August 5, 1893), daughter of Ernst von Richter
• Lucie Olga Maria Sophie (born March 2, 1892) ∞ 1917 in Davos Rino Glacht

After his divorce, on June 21, 1902, he married Johanna ("Hanna") Freiin von Spitzemberg (1877–1960), the daughter of the Baroness Spitzemberg . The couple had two children:

• Hildegard Margarete (born April 25, 1903)
• Gerda Marianne (born January 3, 1908)

literature

• Johannes Hürter (Red.): Biographical Handbook of the German Foreign Service 1871–1945 . Vol. 5: Bernd Isphording, Gerhard Keiper, Martin Kröger (arrangement): T – Z, supplements . Published by the Foreign Office, Historical Service. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, ISBN 978-3-506-71844-0 , p. 180 f.
• Hans-Lukas Kieser : Ambassador Wangenheim and the Young Turkish Committee. Half-hearted peace policy, sudden hope for war and moral defeatism (1913–1915) . In: Rolf Hosfeld , Christin Pschichholz (ed.): The German Empire and the Armenian Genocide. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2017, ISBN 978-3-8353-1897-7 , pp. 131–147.

Web links

Commons : Hans von Wangenheim  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Newspaper article about Hans von Wangenheim in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gerhard Wiegand (Ed.): Half moon in the last quarter. Letters and travel reports from ancient Turkey from Theodor and Marie Wiegand 1895 to 1918. Munich 1970, p. 289.
2. ↑ Tobias C. Bringmann : Handbuch der Diplomatie 1815–1963, Foreign Heads of Mission in Germany and German Heads of Mission abroad from Metternich to Adenauer. Saur, Munich 2001, ISBN 978-3-598-11431-1 , p. 112 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
3. ↑ Guenter Lewy : The Armenian Case. The politicization of history. What happened, how it happened, and why it happened. Edition divan. Klagenfurt / Celovec 2009, p. 279.
4. ↑ Stangeland, Sigurd Sverre: The role of Germany in the genocide of the Armenians 1915-1916 . NTNU, Trondheim 2013, ISBN 978-82-471-4427-5 , p. 92-123 .
5. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries . Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-70425-9 , p. 61 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
6. ↑ Michael Schwartz: Ethnic "cleansing" in the modern age. Global interactions between nationalist and racist politics of violence in the 19th and 20th centuries . Oldenbourg, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-70425-9 , p. 120 f. (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
7. ↑ Then she married Count Waldemar von Uexkull-Gyllenband in Plaue on December 2, 1897

predecessor	Office	successor
Ernst Heinrich von Treskow	Ambassador of the German Reich in Buenos Aires 1900–1903	Julius von Waldthausen
Edmund Friedrich Gustav von Heyking	Ambassador of the German Reich in Mexico 1904–1908	Carl Gottlieb Bünz
Friedrich Rosen	Prime Minister of the German Reich in Tangier 1908–1909	Friedrich Rosen
Otto Lüders	Ambassador of the German Empire in Athens 1909–1912	Werner von Grundherr zu Altenthann and Weiherhaus
Adolf Marshal von Bieberstein	Ambassador of the German Reich in Constantinople 1912–1915	Paul Metternich